Preview: Mindjack (Xbox 360 and PS3)

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Like Gun Loco, Mindjack is a third-person action game from Square Enix. While Gun Loco took the don’t-stop-to-think, non-stop-action route, Mindjack is more strategic, forcing the player to slow down and plan their next move.

At a recent Square Enix event, I got to watch a few minutes of the game being played and to jot down some impressions of the preview build. The game won’t be available until Q1 2011, so it’s still under development. It will be on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Mindjack takes place in a future society where everyone wears some sort of headpiece, sort of like a Bluetooth headset. The problem with this is that terrorists have found a way to hack the headsets and control people, turning them into “mind slaves”. You play as a cop who has to take down those terrorists, but, in a questionable ethical move, you use the same mind control techniques.

The game features the third-party running and cover-based shooting that you’d expect from the genre, but there is a special technique you employee–mindhacking. This is what lets you make your own mind slaves, as well as control robots.

Playing as a cop you can jack into both civilians and enemies and fight from their bodies. This makes anyone in the game a combatant and it means you can place you main character’s body out of harm’s way while some unfortunate citizen gets riddled with bullets in your place. To get from your body to someone else’s you enter a “wander” mode there you float to the desired target (it reminded me of a no-clipping cheat mode).

Your player level will limit how far away you can mindhack people from and how long you can control them, but you can level up attributes over time.

Mindjack also feature a special bit of tech–persistant multiplayer in the single player environment. This works like it did with Demon’s Souls, so other people can hop into your game (if your settings allow for that). These new players will alternate between helping you and fighting against you. Why would they want to play in someone’s game? Well you can gain experience, extend the game after you beat it, and then, it seems, make the game harder for complete strangers.

What’s cool is they you don’t just mindjack people in the game, but also robots. And if you play in someone else’s game you can can hop into bosses, which have unique control schemes. So rather than just being another bad guy you can, say, be a giant robot gorilla, which is definitely a change of pace from the standard game.

Based on the short demo I saw, I’m not sold. The mindhacking techniques seem like they will grow tiring after using them a few times, and I didn’t get to see the multiplayer or bosses, so everything seemed a bit bland. It’s entirely possible that those extra elements are going to allow the game to reach its potential though, so I’m going to make sure to check out more footage as it becomes available. The multiplayer-in-singleplayer could be awesome, so the might be what sets this one apart from the competition.